What is a Business Analyst




Now the term Business Analyst is interchangeable with a career in the IT sector but the most successful and valuable analysts are those who understand the "business" rather than individuals who understand IT.

So what exactly is a Business Analyst? What is the Business Analyst's job? What is the best background for this particular job? What skill set is required? What kind of person is the best fit? What training is necessary and available? Each organisation appears to have its own ideas about the job, skills, duties and expectations. Given the value of the job, a common definition would help both practitioners and companies. In this first part we examine just exactly what a Business Analyst is and learn more about the evolution of the Business Analyst's role.

The contemporary Business Analyst - a definition

To begin with, we have to clarify our terminology. One of the most commonly accepted definitions of a Business Analyst(B.A.) is that of a communicator. The B.A. is the link between the requirements (the client) and the applications alternative (the development team).

The skills demanded by the B.A. are considerably greater than just good inter-personal communication abilities - a range of tools and techniques are needed, as well as an appropriate background and personality. Whilst the modern B.A. performs an extremely critical part in software development, the real skills required for success aren't technology centric. It is worth noting that the evolution of the B.A. to know how we arrived at this.

Evolution of the Business Analyst

In the early days of commercial computing, all of the investigation, development and design work for a software application was performed by the computing specialists, who often had little understanding of the company they worked in.

During the nineties it became common for staff from the company user community to become more closely involved in computer systems development. This move was designed to make sure that computer-based systems were aimed in the actual business issues. The title Business Analyst (B.A.) became common, although there was no commonly-adopted function definition. The staff filling this role knew about the company - or the part of it that they worked in - but they knew little about IT and their investigation skills were often quite restricted.

Nowadays, the business process analysis, the requirements specification and the outline design - plus much of the approval testing and procedures implementation work - is performed by the B.A.

He B.A. wants a range of analysis and creativity skills, data and process modelling abilities, together with demands interpretation and specification-writing skills. They also require social skills for interviewing and also for top workshops to find out what the clients really want and desire. B.A.'s also have to 'sell' the remedy to decision-makers and development teams whilst negotiating and compromising about the 3 key elements of speed, quality and cost. To quote Arthur C. Clarke - "Do you want it quick, cheap or good? I can give you any two."

In addition to this, B.A.'s will usually be working in groups - they might need team leadership abilities and many are required to take on a project management role. In short the contemporary B.A. needs a range of 'hard' skills - data and process modelling, design, specification writing - and a variety of 'soft' skills - analysis, imagination, interviewing, presentation, negotiation - to execute effectively.

Surveys have always reported that over 50% of big software projects are over-budget or supporting schedule. As recently as October 2002, the Australian Financial Review reported on a Sydney organisation that had halted work on a customer billing system due to price blow-outs and missed deadlines. More than $70 million had been invested, with just two out of 21 elements of this system delivered. With inadequate, improper or erroneous requirements as a major contributor to project overruns and failure, the role of a skilled Business Analyst in a project team is more critical than ever.


Continue Reading Here Alastair Majury Stirling

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